Giles sat staring at his half empty whisky glass, alone and tired. Recently he’d been feeling a little underappreciated by everyone. He was no longer a watcher, no longer really relevant. Buffy had tried to incorporate him more into her life but it was still difficult for him not to really feel needed.
A part of him felt like maybe he should return to England. He could go back to his homeland, maybe even open up that quaint little café he’d always dreamed of owning. Perhaps he’d find a nice lady to be with and the two of them could live out the English Dream.
Or then again, he’d probably end up alone and unhappy. He might be the weird man who lived alone with several cats and was the center of the village gossip. He’d probably be the guy that parents told their kids to cross the street when they saw him.
Or he’d find some town with the highest vampire population in the British Isles and end up as vampire chow.
Yeah, that was more likely.
Wouldn’t that be just his luck?
He took another gulp of his drink and let out a sigh, wallowing in his less than desirable thoughts.
A sudden banging on the door startled him and he surged to his feet worriedly. Pulling open the heavy wooden door he was confronted with the horrific sight of a blond vampire cradling his slayer. The young woman was bucking and seizing against the leanly muscular chest of her protector.
“What the bloody hell is going on?” asked Giles, his voice filled with anxiety.
“Gonna let me pass?” Spike asked brusquely. “Got ourselves a little situation here.”
“Well, yes,” Giles stammered, moving aside to allow the vampire into his home. His eyes were glued to his charge…in the arms of William the Bloody.
“Got somewhere I can put her, Watcher?”
“Yes, I…um…in my bedroom, Spike.” Giles replied, confused as to what the hell was going on.
Storming past him, the vampire took the stairs two at a time, careful not to jar the girl and speeded to the bed. He gently deposited his precious cargo onto the woven coverlet. The Slayer wasn’t thrashing as violently as she had been previously, but she was still gasping for breath, shallow pants rocking her chest. Her face was white as a ghost. Spike could only hope that she wasn’t destined to actually become a ghost any time soon.
“Don’t give up on me, pet,” he said quietly, too low for human hearing to pick up on. “Whatever’s ailing you, we’ll find it and beat it. Bloody hell, Slayer, you’re too strong to let go.”
He reached into the pocket of his pants and pulled out a slightly bent cigarette, playing with it nervously, twirling it between his slender fingers. The vampire hadn’t felt this helpless since he’d been captured and chipped by the Initiative. However, even that seemed to pale into insignificance compared to this.
Giles watched the vampire carefully through the small crack in the door as he lit the cigarette and puffed on the small white stick. It dangled casually from between Spike’s thin fingers but the Watcher could see an almost imperceptible tremble in the other male’s hands.
Normally vibrant blue eyes were dull as they gazed down at the Slayer from Spike’s pale face. Giles frowned at the way Spike was staring at the Slayer. It was almost as if he was distraught by her condition.
“You’re gonna be just fine,” Giles heard his fellow Brit assure the unconscious young woman. “Your Watcher’s a smart bloke…most of the time. He’ll work out what’s going on and we’ll get you fixed up and back to your old self in no time. Mark my words, Princess.”
Spike stroked her forehead, the beads of sweat sticking to his cold fingers.
“Not gonna let anything happen to you, love. Only just really found you, and I ain’t bloody well losing you now. Might be a selfish git, but I need to keep you in this world.”
Giles swallowed heavily as the words hit his ears. He’d never imagined what a non-murderous Spike could be like and this was a very bizarre scene that was unfolding in front of him. Especially seeing as Spike had been hell bent on killing Buffy for the entire time that he’d been acquainted with her. Giles slinked away from the slightly ajar door and went back downstairs to await the vampire. He had a plethora of questions that he wanted to ask. And he really needed another drink.
Placing a small kiss on her cheek, Spike drew back from the supine Slayer and took a final drag on his cigarette before stubbing it out on the carpet.
He might be in love with Buffy but he was still bad to the bone.
Okay, maybe not as bad as he used to be but he could still piss off the Watcher sometimes.
It was good stress relief. And he really needed that right about now.
Taking a deep breath he exited the bedroom and descended the stairs, only to be confronted by a purple faced Englishman.
“What did you do to her?” Giles demanded, grabbing the vampire by the scruff of his neck and slamming him against the wall.
“Didn’t bloody do nothing to her,” Spike denied.
The human produced a stake seemingly out of nowhere and pushed the tip against the defenseless vampire’s chest. “Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t stake you right now!”
“’Cause I didn’t hurt your Slayer. I saved the girl. If it wasn’t for me she’d be lying in the middle of Restfield Cemetery right now where any nasty could take a bite out of her.” He gulped down that niggling little guilty feeling at what he’d done with the Slayer when he’d taken her back to his crypt. What the Watcher didn’t know wouldn’t get Spike staked. “And don’t you make any mistake. Sweet treat like the Slayer would be demon chow before you could snap your fingers.”
“Why would you help her?” Giles questioned him, not yet relinquishing his hold on the other Englishman.
Giles’ mind flashed back to the scene he’d just witnessed but he pushed it out of his consciousness. He was too confused to delve into that little can of worms that was threatening to pop open.
“Why wouldn’t I?” The corner of Spike’s mouth twisted sardonically.
“You hate my Slayer. You’ve tried to kill her multiple times and it was only the chip in your brain that prevented you from continuing to try. Surely this would be a perfect solution for you, no?”
Spike laughed, not from humor but from the irony of the situation. Leveling his eyes to Giles’ he sighed wearily. There was no point in trying to hide it. Giles was savvy enough to figure out that there was more to this eventually. And despite his affinity for fudging the truth at times, Spike knew that sometimes it was just easier to tell it how it is.
“Here’s the rub of it, Watcher.” Spike nervously took a gulp of air. “Somewhere along the bloody line I stopped hating the Slayer. I don’t even know when or how it happened, but nonetheless that hate faded away into something…else. Old Willie said it best: ‘My only love sprung from my only hate!’ And that’s what happened.”
“Love? You love a Slayer? You love my Slayer?” he sneered.
“Bloody slayers were my addiction, you know. But I loathed them and their goodness and all I wanted to do was feel their life drain out of their bodies as I squeezed it away with these two hands. And then Buffy came along. And she changed everything. She made me love her. And I love everything about her, Watcher. Including her goodness.”
“You’re really trying to tell me that you genuinely love Buffy?” Giles scoffed incredulously. “Even if you do believe such rubbish, I can’t believe that.”
“What the bloody hell not?” the vampire asked indignantly.
“Well for one thing, you don’t have a soul,” he replied indignantly. “A creature needs a soul to love.”
“You mean the Great-Foreheaded Ponce needs a soul to love.”
“If you’re referring to Angel, then yes. He has always made it quite clear that a vampire cannot feel love without a soul.”
“And of course he’s the ultimate authority on everything,” Spike retorted sarcastically. “May I remind you that I loved Drusilla for over a century, Rupert. I took care of her through thick and thin.”
“That was familial loyalty.”
“Bollocks! You don’t know the buggering shit she put me through at times and I stayed with her.”
“A vampire has a bond with its sire, Spike.”
“You really think that’s why I stayed with her? Because of a bloody bond? Not half, Watcher. I loved the bint. She shagged half the male population of the bleeding world while we were together but I stayed by her side.” He ran a tense hand through his hair. “It didn’t matter to me because I was hers. Not cause she sired me but because I was in love with her and I was faithful to that faithless bitch no matter what she did. I never thought I could feel that deeply for anyone else. But I feel a hundred times the love for Buffy than I did for Dru.”
“What you feel is merely obsession, not love.” Giles words were filled with conviction but Spike couldn’t help but notice a slight tremble in his voice as he spoke.
“Forget your Council doctrines for a minute,” the vampire said imploringly. “Sure, they teach you that my kind are a bunch of mindless zombies who think about nothing more than death and destruction. And I’m not denying that I like a good spot of death and destruction. It’s bloody fun, you know.”
Giles raised his eyes to the ceiling and opened his mouth to speak, but Spike continued with his monologue. “Look, just forget your buggering prejudices for one minute. After everything I’ve done to help her, can’t you see that I’m in love with Buffy?”
“No, I can’t believe it,” Giles denied.
“Then write to Ripley’s because this is the God’s honest truth.”
“You’re not one of God’s creatures, vampire.”
“No, I’m a son of Satan I suppose,” Spike agreed. “But she makes me want to forget the evil inside me. She makes me want to be a better man. You remember you told me that getting this chip might have had a higher purpose? Well I think this is it. Being with Buffy, fighting by her side, loving her…that’s my destiny, Rupes. And I’m not letting it slip away without a fight. Alright?”
Giles sighed, his posture drooping. With one last shake of the vamp, he finally let go of the other man and stepped away from him. The Watcher poured himself another large glass of whiskey, gulping it down without taking a breath before pouring himself a second glass.
“Think you might be able to spare a glass for me?” Spike asked hopefully.
Giles sent him a scathing glare and shook his head but nevertheless poured out a glass of the amber liquid for the vampire.
“Right now what I feel for Buffy isn’t the thing we should be focusing on anyway. We need to figure out what the bloody hell is going on here,” Spike said after a few moments’ silence. “Something bad’s happening to Buffy and someone’s done it to her.”
“Any ideas?” asked Giles.
“I’m pretty sure it’s some kind of spell. There was this weird dark light that surrounded her and then she passed out.”
“And you brought her directly here?” Giles probed, sipping on his third, or possibly fourth, glass of scotch.
“Uh, well. Not exactly. I took her back to my crypt first.”
Giles’ gaze darkened. “If you touched her…” he warned threateningly.
Spike looked away from the Watcher. The vampire had never been a good liar and he figured that Giles would see right through him if he told an outright lie. However, he could fudge the situation.
“I waited for her to wake up. And when she did, the Slayer thought we were back under that bloody spell Red cast on us last year. She wanted me and I told her no. And then she started having a fit, eyes rolling back in her head and foaming at the mouth. So I brought her here.”
The Watcher narrowed his eyes, not sure whether he should fully believe Spike’s version of events. However, he realized that he could probe more deeply into that at a later time. Right now saving Buffy was the priority and they had to try to work out exactly what happened to her. If Spike was right, then it seemed she was under some kind of spell and the best course of action to determine what it was would be research. Having a budding witch in their midst along with a boy who’d done more than his fair share of supernatural research in his time was definitely a bonus.
“I’ll make a call to Willow and Xander,” Giles said, standing up. “They can come over to help us research. Perhaps once we determine what spell has been cast on her then we can track down who cast it. A Slayer makes many enemies in her time so it could be any one of a number of demons or mages.”
“Sure it wasn’t the little witch herself?” Spike asked insightfully. “Not like she hasn’t pulled this crap before.”
Giles shook his head. “I don’t believe that Willow would do this. She learned her lesson after the last fiasco. No, she’s a sensible girl.”
“What about the boy? Heard he cast a spell to make every poor female in this hell-town fall in love with him a few years ago. Dru told me the story after. Bloody bint wanted to make him immortal.” Spike shuddered at the thought of a Xander that would live forever.
“Unfortunately, the witch who Xander commissioned to help him with that little spell has spent the last year and a half as a rat. I very much doubt Xander was responsible for this.”
Spike wasn’t so sure but he didn’t pursue it any more. He could sense that Giles was starting to become irate at these accusations. The vampire couldn’t help but feel a little bitter at the irony of that. The Scoobies never had a problem with accusing him of anything without proof but God forbid he should level anything at their precious selves and he was suddenly the devil.
“I’ll be upstairs,” Spike said with a sigh. “I’m going to check on the Slayer. I don’t want to leave her alone for too long.”
Giles made a face as if he was about to protest about letting Spike stay alone with the Slayer but the determination in Spike’s gaze stopped him from opening his mouth. Instead he nodded, watching the very strange vampire make his way up a flight of stairs toward a Slayer he professed to be in love with. Giles sighed.
Just another day of life on the Hellmouth.
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